Google, this morning spent $625 million in cash to buy Postini, a start-up that provides encryption and security as a hosted service. Google believes this deal is further testimony about its serious commitment to providing hosted apps to businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses.
Google Apps are being used by 1,000 small businesses, universities and also there is an interest from large companies. On their Google Apps blog,
For organizations that are not yet ready to jump full force into hosted applications, Postini’s proven messaging security and corporate compliance management solutions are a great place to start.
That addresses at least some of my own personal concerns about the security of using these applications, but you think you are ready to take a chance on Google Apps for running your business.
Additional Reading: GigaOM: Google buys Postini, How High Can Google Go?
I use Google Apps for my personal email domain, and for a friend’s new photography company.
I use Google Docs for a few spreadsheets (budget) and documents (resume) that I want to be able to access all the time.
I found each app very easy to setup, have not had any downtime (that I’ve noticed) and have had no complaints so far. My friend found the lack of folders (a la gmail) confusing, but once I explained tags, she was hooked.
My concerns with Google Apps are:
– will it continue to be free? (or at least offer a level of service matching the current offering that is free)
– will it continue to be ad-free?
– is it going to lose my email or experience other problems that Google Reader has?
All in all Google Apps is helpful for small businesses without their own infrastructure.
Adding encryption to their service iss the one thing that would make me instantly use Google Apps for real. I’ve played with it in the past, but wasn’t planning to just put everything online without me being able to seal it from the rest of the world (or Google). This is serious good news.
i use them, but this is super small man.
also, the exact quote coming from the post first says “every day, more than 1,000 small businesses sign up for Google Apps”
…which seems like way more than 1,000:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/welcome-postini-team.html
I use google apps for fast and easy way to get a distributed team to workon project documents. I have seen documents get split up and worked on at the same time and it si easy to use. I do not use the google apps as a permanent part of my business, but see the benefits as a perminant part of a project team.
Calc and Doc’s are the only ones that I use at this time. Unless you count reader, maps, and the customizable homepage as apps as well. I think this is the way of the future, but I would like to see more security or at least a comment about security before it is used exclusivly by me for all forms files.
I’m already using Google Apps for my domain’s email.
To all the bubble-startups dreaming about being bought by google… How can you negociate if all your docs are hosted at google? 😉
For me it would be the same as negociating a life insurance with my doctor… 😉
More seriously: I only use this for none critical documents.
But for your critical documents…. How can you prevent a consultant, freelance or employee working at google using/reading them.
All documents should be encrypted and unreadable by google…
Hope google will stick to their tagline: “Don’t be evil”
I just introduced Google Apps to a local charity, even though they just have invested in (charity prized) MS software. Ad tho they love the possibility to collaborate on documents, encryption always was one of their concerns.
Not that much for Gmail for domains, they love how simple it is to manage Gmail for domains and don’t bother too much about encryption for mails (although all browser have the extension to force https), but it always worried them a little when it came to letters and spreadsheets. I think now they’ll be able to sleep well.
I like Google Apps and I use them every day. They are good and useful!
Nope. Well, unless Reader and GMail count 🙂
I think Google has a decent set of streamlined easy to use applications. The problem I have is their privacy statement that they will crawl and index your data. For personal use, I don’t think that is a big deal, but for a business?
I see a gap in large business adoption until this privacy issue is addressed and resolved.
If I were a business, and wanted to use an online productivity suite, I would be more likely to use the Zoho application suite. The suite has more features and will keep your content private.